Blast rocks US military warehouse in Japan

Multiple explosions and a large fire at a U.S. Army depot lit up the night sky in a Tokyo suburb early Monday. No injuries were reported.

The blast happened after midnight at the U.S. Army Sagami General Depot in Sagamihara,  said Navy Cmdr. Bill Urban, a Pentagon press officer. Sagamihara is a city about 25 miles southwest of Tokyo.

"The storage building is not designated as a hazardous material storage facility as some initial reports indicated," he said in the release. 

The cause of the blast is under investigation.

The building that exploded was storing compressed nitrogen, oxygen, Freon and air, according to a statement.

Photos taken after daybreak and released by the Army show dozens of gray canisters lying on the floor, and what looks like mangled storage racks.

The walls of the one-story, concrete building remain intact, but the windows and doors are damaged and about half of the roof collapsed, according to the release. There are no indications of injuries.

Video on Japanese television, apparently shot from an elevated place outside the post, shows a fire in the distance and subsequent explosions shooting small fiery blasts into the sky. A woman told national broadcaster NHK that it sounded like fireworks.

Base firefighters were joined by the Sagamihara City emergency services in fighting the fire to present its spread to nearby buildings, the Army said.

Al Jazeera and wire services